Alisa III Chronicle: Laying the Past
by DezoPenguin
Summary: A collection of my Phantasy Star III stories focusing on the third-generation hero, Sean, and his companions.
1. Preface

_**Preface**_

Ordinarily, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. Therefore, one may ask, why did I choose the third generation which sees Ayn and Thea go up in flames together with the entire surviving population of Cille and Shusoran when Azura is destroyed? Drama, sheer drama. Sean's ending is also open-ended (unlike the other three, which all end up with the _Alisa III_ arriving at a planet, Sean's ending has it encounter another Algolian spaceship, the _Neo Palm_), so that's useful for future scenario construction. But mostly, it's because of the dramatic potential. Sean starts the quest having just lost everything that was important to him—his family, his homeland, and his very reason for being. He's consumed with just one thing: finding and stopping the one who did this.

Sean's quest tends to be equally bleak. The first person he meets up with of any note is Sari, who's basically been fighting a holding action for eighteen years against Lune; Landen has existed in a state of more-or-less permanent warfare. And when you finally make it to Dahlia, you find that Lune has nearly collapsed under the weight of knowing that his war against Orakians was not only contemptible on its own merits, but that he'd been completely mistaken about the cause of the original war and the events behind it. The Kara that Sean (and Crys) get in their party is a hard, driven person, defiant and angry...basically like Sari, only with less self-control and more despair.

Accordingly, the stories I wrote for this generation are largely character studies, which flesh out the various events of the game and give them added emotional content: "Buried Treasure," "Dawnbringers," and "Voices" are literally expansions on what we see on-screen while playing, adding in the impact they have on the various characters, "Heart of Fire" is a character vignette about Kara just before she joins the party, and "Heart of Stone" and "Closing the Circle" flesh out the ending and its impact on the party. There aren't any of the large set pieces like "Murder in Shusoran" and "Steel and Stone," only "Dawnbringers" features any development of fan theories about game continuity, and all of the fics take place during the time-span of Sean's actual quest instead of being prequels or sequels. Ironically, I find these to be some of my most satisfying works among my _PSIII_ fics; perhaps because of their focus on the characters I found more empathy for the third-generation cast than I did with either of the previous sets. For those of you who have followed my "Alisa III Chronicle" collection all the way through, I hope that these stories will satisfyingly wrap things up for you.

**GAME INFORMATION:** If Ayn marries Thea, they become King and Queen of Azura and their son, Prince Sean, is the PC for the final generation of the game. After years of peace, a laser attack from the seventh (southeast) dome suggests that Siren has made good his promise to take revenge. Wren and Mieu bundle Sean into an escape shuttle while Ayn and Thea choose to go down with the ship. Azura is obliterated, taking all its people with it. Players who grew fond of Ayn now kick themselves twice as firmly for not picking Sari.

Sean crash-lands in Aridia and sets about his quest of figuring out what is happening and whose head is going to roll. Journeying to Landen, he finds that Sari has kept the hordes of the Layan general Lune (who, apparently, was sealed on Dahlia just the same way as Siren was sealed on Azura) from conquering Landen. Now, though, everything is going crazy, with mixed packs of monsters and cyborgs attacking everybody! Sari suggests that the war can be ended with "Laya's Treasure," and that a machine in the southwest world can help Sean find Laya's Treasure.

In that southwest world (Elysium), Sean learns that Laya's Treasure can be found in Aridia where Lune has been searching for it, by using the submarine parts for Wren. Yes, Wren isn't just an android, but a transforming android! In fact, the sub parts do allow Wren to dive into a whirlpool in Aridia just south of Hazatak, which leads to a hidden world. In that world is a shrine, where Laya's younger sister (also named Laya) has been kept cryogenically frozen since the Devastation War. Laya reveals that her last memory of her older sister was that she'd left with a "knight wielding a black sword" and that she wants to learn the truth. The attendants suggest that the castle of Mystoke in the world of Frigidia holds a key to truth. Laya's Mystery Star jewel unlocks the passage to Frigidia.

In the ice-sheathed world, Sean leads Laya to the throne room of Mystoke, the Castle of Silence, and retrieves Laya's pendant, which holds the elder Laya's last message to her younger sister. Apparently, the "knight with a black sword" was Orakio! In fact, a third, evil force had manipulated Laya and Orakio into fighting the Devastation War, and the two of them eventually learned the truth and went to save their people. Since the _Alisa III_ was still there, they must have succeeded, but since they were never seen again...

Guided by the people of Mystoke, Sean heads north. With Laya's Pendant allowing them access, they find that the Laya's Temples scattered through the worlds are actually teleport gates allowing instant access from world to world, which proves the only way to get to the village of Aerone, which apparently serves as the bridge of the _Alisa III_ where the pilots reside. The companions travel from there to the moon Dahlia and meet Lune, who has apparently already realized from the new crises taking place that a third force, neither Orakian nor Layan, has been unleashed and is responsible for the hatred between peoples. Crushed by the fact that he's spent a millennium nursing a worthless grudge and has killed many out of senseless hate, Lune is a broken man, but his daughter Kara is more than sufficiently badass to want to make the ones responsible pay in blood.

The dungeon under Dahlia contains more transformation parts for Wren, enabling him to turn into an aerojet and reach the floating city of Skyhaven in the skies of Frigidia. There the companions meet the Council of Skyhaven, who tell them to gather the five legendary weapons: Orakio's Sword, Miun's Claw, Siren's Shot, Lune's Slicer, and Laya's Bow, and go to Sage Isle, where the Sages can impart the Word of Power to, well, empower them. (It almost rises to the level of metaphor when you realize that, in a game where cryogenic sleep exists, all three settlements in the world of Frigidia—Mystoke, New Mota, and Skyhaven—apparently exist for the sole purpose of passing down bits of knowledge from the Devastation War to an unknown future generation. It's like the reason the world is sheathed in ice is because the entire place is, itself, in cryo-stasis.)

Sean retrieves Orakio's Sword from a sunken palace beneath the seas in Landen (Rhys sailed past it on the way to Lyle's island waaaaay back when, and apparently passed the story down). Unfortunately, pulling out the sword unleashes "Dark Force," the force of incarnate destruction, which had been sealed by it. This does not seem like a good thing, but is apparently all part of the plan. Luckily, Dark Force apparently needs to gather its strength before attempting to kill our heroes, and being immersed within its evil gives Sean the Megido technique. He can't cast it in battle, but hey.

With Orakio's Sword in hand, the next step is Aridia. Miun, still wandering in the desert, recognizes Orakio's Sword and believes that Orakio has come back to her, and she dies happy, leaving Miun's Claw behind for Mieu. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any sign of Siren's Shot anywhere, so Sean decides to press on to Sage Isle, which is back in Aquatica. With good fortune, it turns out that Siren actually washed up there and was taught the truth by the Sages; he then dies and gives up Siren's Shot. With the full set in hand, Sean talks to the Sages and is given the Word of Power, Nei. Mieu is also taught another technique the player can't actually use, Grantz.

The companions return to Skyhaven, where the Councillors empower the Nei weapons and direct the heroes to the seventh world, Terminus, and the floating city of Lashute. Sean and his party fight through Lashute, where the cackling followers of Dark Force reveal that yes, indeed, the kidnapping of Maia was indeed set up by them in a giant, twisted plot by which Rhys would bring the moons back, letting Siren and Lune start another war of devastation, leading to the passageways between worlds being unlocked and, ultimately, Dark Force freed. The head cackler is Rulakir, Orakio's twin brother, who's been alive for a thousand years as an unholy minion of Dark Force. Defeating him opens the gateway to the dungeon under Lashute, where Dark Force is finally confronted and defeated. Consumed by his anger, Sean unleashes Megido reflexively, which blasts apart _the entire city _of Lashute (and, not coincidentally, all the assorted surviving evil minions, if any). Being caught in a collapsing city...a collapsing _flying_ city...is not really a good thing, so thankfully Mieu reveals that the Grantz technique is actually the Fly spell from _Phantasy Star I_ and teleports the companions to safety in the nick of time.

With the day saved, a new surprise is found: another spaceship, the _Neo Palm_, approaches the _Alisa III_. Apparently, it was the only other survivor of the exodus fleet and had come by to lend a hand (I'd complain about their timing, but if you play the Aron's Quest version of the third generation, you find out that they were better off being late anyway...), and the last survivors of Palm are free to continue towards a new, hopeful future...


	2. Buried Treasure

"So _this_ is Laya's Treasure!" Mieu exclaimed as she pulled herself from the water. Next to her, a sleek silver sea sled rested on the beach, and a green-haired man with a ponytail and a long white cape unhooked himself from the breathing apparatus and dismounted.

"A hidden world within the Aridia dome," Prince Sean of lost Azura mused, "accessible only by a water-filled passage." He said it calmly, eyes flicking left and right, assessing possible threats in a way the combat cyborg approved of but was worried by on an emotional level. "But what does it hide that makes Lune want it so badly?"

There was a whirring noise, and before their eyes the submersible reconfigured itself into the humanoid form of the third member of their party. Wren was, like Mieu, a cyborg over one thousand years old. While Mieu was strictly a combat android, Wren possessed a wide variety of technical and analytical skills, but unlike her lacked emotions, lacked a truly human personality.

"I am not familiar with this location," he declared. "The schematics of the _Alisa III_ contained in my memory banks do not disclose it. Possibly its existence was known only to those possessing the highest levels of security clearance."

"But if it's _Laya's_ treasure..."

"Maybe it's not Laya's treasure but a treasure Laya was looking for?" Mieu suggested.

Sean shrugged.

"Maybe. We'll find out soon enough, though."

Squaring his shoulders, he set off along the strip of land leading away from the beach, a narrow peninsula which led the prince of a destroyed satellite and his android companions west from the passage by which they had entered this hidden world. After a few hours' walk, the mainland came into view, a grassy plain studded by occasional trees.

"Everything is so peaceful here," Mieu marveled. "No marauding robots, no monsters lurking in the brush; it's so unlike the outside world." A gentle breeze teased the combat cyborg's brilliant red hair. Part of her wanted to lay down and stay here forever, to escape from the warfare that had claimed the _Alisa III_.

One thousand years in the past, the forces of Mieu's creator, Orakio, had battled their foes led by the dark witch Laya in a strife known as the Devastation War. The two leaders had eventually passed on orders not to kill members of the opposing side, and then had disappeared, presumably for a final battle. Neither Mieu nor Wren knew what had occurred then, but the seven domes of the great colony ship had been sealed off from one another and their people's knowledge of the past lost. All that had remained was the centuries-old hatred, based on a conflict none had remembered the reason for.

Thanks to Prince Rhys of Landen, a blood descendant of Orakio, and his wife, the Layan Princess Maia of Cille, peace between the two races had started to be forged. Yet a generation later, war had come, as the android Siren and the technique-master Lune, generals under Orakio and Laya during the Devastation War, had come ravening out of legend to burn and slaughter. Siren had destroyed the Layan cities of Cille and Shusoran, and their population had fled to Azura, only to see it too destroyed in the third generation. All Rhys' work was undone as the _Alisa III_ was engulfed in bloodshed, not just from Siren and Lune's armies but also new horrors that preyed upon both Orakian and Layan indiscriminately. The hopelessness of it all was sometimes more than Mieu thought she could bear.

Neither of her companions could truly understand. Wren had no emotions; despair was an abstract concept to him rather than a force seeking to tear his electronic heart from his chest. And Sean...since Azura's fall he had become a man of stone. There was no rage, no fury, no grief at his loss. It had all been frozen into a cold, systematic determination to root out the identity of Azura's destroyers and annihilate them as they had annihilated Sean's people.

Yet, Mieu kept on, for her core directive was to obey the commands of Orakio's descendants, and Sean was the last of that line. It was one of the advantages of being an android. Though her feelings might inhibit her, they would not stop her from helping Sean to the last.

Suddenly, Sean stopped and pointed.

"What's that?"

Mieu followed the direction of his gaze. It was a building of some kind, with a columned front and sloping roof, seemingly carved of tan marble--or more likely, built of metal and plastic with a veneer of stone over it.

"It appears similar in appearance to the structures known as 'Laya's Palaces,'" Wren observed. "Do you intend to investigate?"

"We can't enter into Laya's Palace," Sean mused. "Every time we've tried a barrier has kept us out and that voice--robotic? or the product of Layan techniques?--says that Laya's Palace is for Layans only, which apparently doesn't include two cyborgs and a descendant of Orakio."

It was the closest he'd come to making a joke in weeks.

"Still, we might as well have a look. It's the only sign of habitation we've run across."

Another hour's walk brought them before the palace, and Sean led them up the short steps to the portico and between the columns. They walked through the broad, open doors and entered the dimly lit palace.

Where they received their first shock.

_This palace was inhabited. _

It was a sign of just how much Mieu had come to anticipate violence and destruction at every turn that her first thought was, _Not here, too. _Only then did she recognize that the inhabitants were not cyborgs or monsters or soldiers, but white-bearded old men wearing light-colored robes.

"Welcome!" called the first one to catch sight of them. "Welcome to Laya's Treasure. We have waited here for nearly a thousand years!"

"A thousand years?" Sean asked. "Since the time of the Devastation War?"

The graybeard's head bobbed up and down.

"We have kept to our task as Laya bade our forefathers, watching over the machines and keeping the sleeping one safe."

Mieu glanced at Wren in confusion. Machines? Sleeping one?

"What do you mean?" Sean asked.

"Come, come and we will tell you--we will show you!"

They followed the old man deeper into the temple, their feet echoing off the flagstones. The long, narrow vault ended at a square pool of crystal blue water.

"Laya told us that you would come for the princess in a thousand years, truthseekers," their host told them. He advanced to the edge of the pool and withdrew a small control unit from the pocket of his robe. Several of the other men gathered around the pool and watched as the first man manipulated the controls. A low humming noise seemed to permeate the chamber; it was coming, Mieu realized, from beneath the floor. Suddenly, waves crashed against the edge of the pool as something thrust itself up through the water.

"The sleeping one has lain dreaming here since the time of Laya and Orakio," one of the attendants said rapturously. "You will be the first to speak to her in all that time."

"But...what is it? It looks like a coffin?" Sean said, staring at the object in the center of the pool. He was right; it did look like a metallic coffin covered with tubes and conduits, only the lid was made of a clear plastiglass through which the outline of a human form could be seen.

"It is a cryogenic stasis chamber," Wren explained.

"That is right," their host said. "Cryogenic sleep has kept her alive since the war."

Sean glanced at Wren in confusion, then shrugged. If the cyborg believed it was possible, then that was sufficient. He didn't need to know the how of it, only that he wasn't being lied to.

"But who is she?"

"This princess is Laya's younger sister. Strangely enough, she is also named Laya!"

The one who seemed to be the leader of the guardians did something else with his remote control device, and heating elements along the stasis chamber's sides began to glow. Steam hissed as it was vented out of the sleep casket. The violet-tinted ice which obscured the view of the woman within melted away, and Mieu could soon see a slender blonde girl in a red dress with a short skirt, her eyes closed.

"Laya's sister!" she exclaimed.

"This is the treasure Lune sought? Laya's sister?"

"Lune knows nothing of her," one of the men said, "though he has heard of this world, I am certain."

"Then," Sean mused, "Lune just sought Laya's Treasure because he wanted whatever Laya had left. As Laya's most secret stronghold, it would no doubt hold something precious and powerful, or so he would think."

"You are correct, young man, for the young Laya _is_ both precious and powerful."

The leader of the men turned to Sean.

"Laya entrusted the future to her sister. Her last stronghold was in the castle of Mystoke, in the world of Frigidia. When you return to the desert, you must go southwest of here with Laya. The portal to Mystoke awaits you there."

It sounded like a prophecy, the voice of some sage or oracle.

_Laya's sister!_ Mieu thought. The biological relative of Orakio's ancient enemy, someone whom the android expected to be a bloodthirsty foe of she herself and her master. And yet, the world had been turned upside down in the past millennium. Mieu had fought alongside Siren in the Devastation war, but had battled against him with Sean's father Ayn, defending _Layans_ against Siren's attacks. Sean may have been a descendant of Orakio, but his mother and paternal grandmother had both been full-blooded Layans. Peace between the two sides had become the ideal of the new era. Why shouldn't the sister of Laya join them, to solve a mystery which threatened Orakians and Layans alike?

Slowly, the plastiglass canopy lifted, and the three newcomers stepped forward to see. The sleeping girl's eyelashes fluttered, and then the lids raised.

_She is beautiful,_ Mieu thought, _and yet so strange. _She had the face of a girl no more than twenty, and yet with the calm serenity of one who was truly a thousand years old. A crimson jewel like a cabochon-cut ruby was set in her forehead as if it was a third eye. And her true eyes...her sister, the "dark witch" of Orakian legend, had never been spoken of as having a gaze like this. They were black pools of darkness, "whites" and irises alike, and the pupils were reversed as well, like stars in their tiny night skies.

"When...when is it?" she asked softly. "How long has it been?"

"We are told you've slept for a thousand years," Sean told her. He no longer had the time or inclination to trouble with anything besides the pure, blunt truth these days.

"So long..." she whispered. "Who are you?"

"Sean Sa Riik, Prince of Azura."

Her eyes flashed wide.

"_Sa Riik!_ That was _Orakio's_ name!" Her gaze flicked left and right, to Mieu and Wren. "And these androids!" Laya's head dropped. "I never believed that when I woke it would be in the hands of enemies."

"We're not your enemies," Sean told her, "not unless you make it so. It's true that I am a descendant of Orakio, but I'm also the grandson of one of your Dragon Knights."

Laya's gaze rose.

"Then you are--"

Sean smiled wryly.

"Myself," he stated. "Neither Orakian nor Layan, but a bit of both. But maybe that's what the world needs. Cyborgs attacking Orakians, monsters attacking Layans--everything we've believed for centuries has been swept away."

"You sound like my sister," the girl told him softly.

"I do?"

Laya stepped from the sleep-chamber, her white boots splashing into water which rose to her ankles.

"Before she left, Laya told me that the war was going strangely, that something was wrong with it. I asked if we were going to lose, and she said that no, she wasn't talking about military success, but something else."

Sean turned to the leader of the old men.

"Is that what you meant when you said that Mystoke held a key to truth?"

"I cannot say. All I know is the knowledge that has been passed down for generations."

"Everything seems to be coming out of the past in the current age," Sean said. "First Wren and Mieu. Then Lune and Siren. Now Laya. All from the Devastation War. Maybe the solution we're looking for is from that era, too."

"Please," the girl asked suddenly. "When Laya left me here, she left with a knight who wore a black sword. I must know the truth of what happened to her--what was wrong with the war, what drove her to put me into cryogenic stasis. Please take me with you!"

Sean nodded.

"Yes, you can come with us. We'll hunt for the truth together, we four."

Mieu could not speak, though. Her attention had been captured by one phrase Laya had spoken: "a knight who wore a black sword." While there might have been others, Mieu knew of only one such warrior in that ancient era, one man who might have been Laya's ally in that last battle--but that was _impossible!_ Unbelievable!

_Orakio!_

~X X X~

_A/N: The appearance of Laya's eyes is based on how they look on two separate TV screens when I played the original game on the Genesis. Oddly enough, on the GBA I can see a tiny sliver of "white" around the edge, which ruins the whole thing (especially when you consider that the white pupils are very likely an artistic conceit used for contrast because she has jet-black eyes), but darn it, I'm not going to retcon it now! Observant readers will note that _some_ of the old men's lines are directly taken from game text...you can usually tell when the dialogue gets a little clumsy..._


	3. Voices

_"Sister, it is time for you to know the truth. Though Orakio and I have fought for many years, we finally realize that we have been deceived. An evil force from times beyond legend is using us to satisfy its desire for pain and suffering. We are joining forces to fight this ancient evil. In case we never return, I leave you the pendant; you will hear this when you are ready. Goodbye!"_

The voice seemed to hang in the throne room of Mystoke, the Castle of Silence. Even Wren, the emotionless android who did not have a sense of the momentous or the aesthetic, appreciated the import of the moment. After all, the voice had been that of Laya, who had led her forces in the Devastation War against Wren's master Orakio one thousand years ago.

"Then...the knight with the black sword my sister left with...was _Orakio_?" stammered the blond girl who held the voice-recording pendant. Her name was Laya, too, and she was the younger sister of the ancient leader. Her strange dark eyes held confusion in their white-pupilled depths.

"This seems likely," Wren observed. "Orakio was well-known for his sword, which was superior to even planar-honed weapons of laconia, and this recording sheds a new light upon his relationship with Laya."

"It also explains Orakio's Law and Laya's Law," said Sean. The green-haired Prince of Azura was a descendant of Orakio, but he was also three-fourths Layan, as both his mother and paternal grandmother were full-blooded Layan women. In a way, Wren's current master was a living example of the paradox they'd just heard. "Both Laya and Orakio ordered their forces not to kill each other in order to stop the war. They're probably also responsible for sealing off the passages between the various worlds of this spaceship."

"That is speculative," Wren agreed, "but--"

"Those _bastards_!"

The scream of rage did not come from Laya. Nor did it come from Sean, though he'd be entitled to it. Since the death of his parents and the destruction of most of his people when the blue moon, Azura, had been destroyed by laser fire, Sean had seemed almost as emotionless as Wren himself, the mask of cold determination never slipping, even for an instant. Had he been able, Wren suspected he would have felt concerned for the young prince.

But the anger had not been Sean's. Instead, it had come from Mieu. Like Wren, Mieu was an android, centuries old. Unlike him, her artificial-intelligence personality was imbued with an emotional capacity.

"Mieu, what is the matter?" Wren inquired.

"Orakio and Laya!" she all but screamed. "How could they _do_ this to us?"

Often, Wren did not understand Mieu's viewpoint due to her emotions, but it seemed that this time the humans didn't comprehend, either.

"Do?" Sean asked. "Do what?"

"They knew there was no point to the war, that whatever had started it was a lie, didn't they?"

"Yes..."

"But they didn't _tell_ anyone!" Mieu screamed. "For a thousand years Layans and Orakians have hated each other for no reason at all! Wren, do you remember how when we first came to Agoe and Shusoran they were on the verge of another war? Lune's hordes of monsters butchered Orakians throughout Elysium and Satera, while Siren destroyed the Layans of Cille and Shusoran. And how many others have died over the last millennium? All over something that had no meaning in the first place!"

Mieu spun and lashed out, slashing deep ruts in the throne's faded upholstery with her laconian claws.

"Wren," she whispered plaintively, "Orakio left us behind the same way Laya left this pendant and our Laya, didn't he?"

"Yes, the two conditions seem somewhat analogous."

"Then why didn't he tell us the truth?"

Laya reached out and laid a soft hand on Mieu's shoulder.

"Maybe they did try to tell people," she said, "and no one believed them."

Wren pondered this answer. It seemed very much in accord with what he knew about human psychology.

"This is very likely. Perhaps it is the reason Siren and Lune were banished to the moons, because they were not amenable to a peaceful resolution."

"Or maybe the 'evil force from times beyond legend' was moving fast and they didn't have time to slow down and solve things fully," Sean said. "Instead, they banished their generals, locked the passages to keep their forces away from each other as best they could, left the three of you behind as an emergency backup, and went off to fight the evil."

Mieu's eyes would have been tear-stained had she been given the ability to cry.

"Then...they...Orakio and Laya..."

"Once the evil was defeated, they could have come back to their people and led them onto a path of peace, but they never had the chance."

"So the 'evil force' defeated them?" Mieu asked, although she already knew the answer.

"Most likely," Wren stated. "However, it is also probable that they in turn injured or destroyed this force, or else the subsequent centuries would not have been largely peaceful."

"Things aren't peaceful any more," Sean said. "Maybe this evil force has come back."

"I have no data which would tend to confirm or deny your supposition."

"It doesn't matter." Sean put a reassuring arm around Mieu's shoulders. "Whatever is the cause, we'll find it and put an end to it, and unlike our forebears we won't leave tears and silence in our wake."


	4. Heart of Fire

Cold.

The purple moon, Dahlia, in truth merely a spacecraft locked in tow by the great seven-domed colony ship _Alisa III_, always seemed cold to Kara these days. Rationally, she knew that it could be no more than a trick of perception. Every part of the vessel was kept at a carefully controlled temperature by its climate adjustment system, neither cold nor hot.

It might have been the feeling of empty space above in the artificial "sky," an eternal night strewn with stars, or the even more disconcerting effect of seeing those same stars beneath her feet on the mirror-finish plastiglass tiles that alternated with _faux_ stone construction, but she doubted it. Kara had been born and raised on Dahlia. She didn't expect green grass under her feet or blue sky artificially projected on the inside of the atmospheric dome above her head.

But then again, maybe that _was_ the answer. This _was_ her home, and it was a home that for most of her life had been wreathed in the hot flame of vengeance. Kara's father was Lune Kai Eshyr, general of the forces of long-dead Laya, and he had taken it upon himself to finish the war against the followers of Orakio that had been suspended when he had been plunged into cryogenic stasis a millennium ago.

That was the world Kara had lived in. _Hate the Orakians! Drown them in their own blood!_ She'd begun her weapons training almost as soon as she could walk. Her apprentice years had been spent on the field of battle, casting blades or mystic techniques against the Orakian war machines, ordering packs of bioengineered monsters to rend the flesh of Orakian knights and soldiers. She was a warrior, one of Dahlia's best, and the death-flame had burned high and hot and bright in her soul.

Until less than a year ago, that had been Kara's world. Then, everything had changed, been turned on its head. New, more powerful monsters swarmed the _Alisa III_--monsters not bred by Lune or any of the Layan peoples. Simultaneously, new robots began to prowl, but they were clearly not controlled by Lune's enemies of Divisia and Landen. Rather, the monsters and cyborgs attacked Layans and Orakians indiscriminately, sometimes even joining together in doing so. This had never happened before; it shook the very foundations of what it meant to be Layan or Orakian. Lune's war ended--how could it go on when all sides were besieged by this unknown foe?

Then, something which was perhaps less unthinkable but even more shocking occurred. Ship-to-ship laser fire erupted from the seventh dome of the _Alisa III_ and struck the blue moon, Dahlia's twin craft Azura. After only a few minutes of this assault, the moon exploded, producing a brilliant flash in the silent vacuum of space. A terrible blow had been struck, and yet no one knew why or by whom.

It had shaken Lune to his core. Kara's father had had the knowledge that the Orakians were not his enemies driven home to him in a ruthlessly direct fashion, and it had crushed him. The dynamic leader had become the shell of his old self, morose, brooding, and hopeless.

And Kara had no more battles.

For the Princess of Dahlia, it was intensely frustrating. She was a machine that raced without any resistance, any purpose. All she could do was stand, the stars above and below, and wait for what would come.

Destruction seemed inevitable. It might come from satellite-crushing lasers, or from swarms of creatures and robots, but in the end it must come, and no one was trying to do anything about it. Their flames had gone out, their fire was spent. It was as if her father and all the people of Dahlia were already dead, and merely waiting for their bodies to recognize the fact.

In her heart, fury burned, hatred at the ones who had started this, at Azura's destroyers, at the creators of monsters and robots, at her father for wasting his life--and hers!--on a useless war, on the people of Dahlia for passively accepting their fate, at herself, even, for being caught in the middle of it all.

Perhaps she raged because she didn't know how to do anything else. Or perhaps it was because without the anger Kara would surely succumb to the numbing, soul-killing despair that seemed to have claimed the rest of her home.

_I have to do something!_ Kara all but screamed in her mind. _I can't just stay here. I don't want to be broken like Father!_

When the servant entered the room, part of Kara registered his presence and had calculated the best way to incapacitate him before fully recognizing him and his non-threat status, but another part took no notice of him at all.

"Too weak," she murmured. "They're all too weak to fight, but what can I do alone?"

"Your Highness?" the servant asked. "Were you talking to me? I'm sorry, but I didn't quite hear you."

Her head snapped up, her attention belatedly captured.

"What was that, Viro?"

"I...I just didn't know what you said, your Highness."

"That's all right; I was just thinking out loud. Why are you here? I didn't summon you."

Her voice struck like a lash and the young man flinched. Kara scowled, not at him but at herself, for making him the target of her temper.

"N-no, your Highness, his Majesty Lune sent me."

"Father did?"

"He wants you to come to the audience hall, your Highness. A shuttle has arrived from the _Alisa III_, bringing visitors. They say...they say the leader calls himself Prince Sean of Azura!"

_"Azura?"_ Kara was out of her chair in an instant.

"T-that's what the rumor is, your Highness."

"Azura..." she repeated thoughtfully. A destroyed land. Was he here fleeing that fate? Or was it something else? Vengeance against the slayers of his people?

For the barest moment, a spark of hope flickered deep in Kara's soul.

And in that moment, her world felt just a bit warmer.


	5. Dawnbringers

It was cold in the aerial city of Skyhaven. Not so cold, perhaps, as on the ground there in the ice-wreathed world of Frigidia, but still enough that puffs of vapor rose from the lips of three of the five companions. The group's leader, green-haired Sean, dealt with it as he did any other obstacle, by grimly pressing forward without acknowledging it any more than he had to in order to overcome it. Next to him, Princess Kara of Dahlia was, as always, his mirror; she pulled her cloak tightly close around her over her laconian mesh war-robe and complained in extremely inelegant terms.

"You should be glad you weren't with us the first time we came to Frigidia," combat android Mieu observed. "We had to circle this world twice, once from the passage to Mystoke, and them from Mystoke back to the temple gate to Elysium. We didn't have Wren's aerojet parts then, so we had to do all our traveling on foot."

Kara turned to Mieu, looked her up and down, and scowled.

"Do you _have_ to go around dressed that way while talking about that stuff?"

Mieu glanced down at herself. She wore only a red unitard with while elbow-length gloves and knee boots. As an android, she didn't need protection from the cold, not even her pseudo-organic skin sheath.

"Wearing unnecessary clothing would reduce Mieu's combat effectiveness," noted the group's second android. Wren, technically a Searren386-series, looked much more like a machine than Mieu did, with an armored metal body and only his head having any human features—and even that distorted by various sensor arrays. He acted more machine-like as well, since his artificial intelligence wasn't programmed for human emotions.

"Yeah, well, having to look at her reduces mine. I swear my teeth start chattering every time I see it."

The third human member of the group giggled at the byplay. Blonde, dark-eyed Laya had spent centuries in cryogenic stasis since the Devastation War, as much of a relic of that era as were the androids, but she was still a young woman, and she was relieved when she _could_ enjoy herself. Sean's ice and Kara's fire both spawned from the same source, the need for vengeance against their common enemy, and it made them...uncomfortable for her to approach, sometimes.

Small wonder, then, that Laya considered Mieu her closest friend in the group. Like Sean and Kara, they shared a reason for fighting, but rather than revenge it was for the sake of a trust, left to them a millennium ago, to the android by Sean's ancestor Orakio and to the woman by her sister, the elder Laya.

How much easier must it be for Wren, Laya wondered. To carry no pain, no sense of loss, no burden of the past, to simply...exist, for its own sake, and calmly carry out necessary missions without hesitation or fear. Sometimes, she envied him that peace.

Sean led the way down the stairs to where the Council of Skyhaven gathered, standing before the bearded old men in the amphitheater-like square at the bottom of the city. One by one the companions drew their weapons. First Sean, with the gleaming black sword once wielded by his forefather, Orakio himself, with its basket hilt designed for an ancient style of swordsmanship different from modern, two-handed techniques. Mieu extended and locked into place the claw once wielded by Orakio's companion, her fellow Mieu-type, Miun. Wren unstrapped Siren's Shot, a great cannon that somehow required neither ammunition nor to be connected to Wren's internal power supply, instead bearing its own power core. Kara drew the slicer her father, Lune, had wielded in the Devastation War a thousand years past. Lastly, Laya produced the bow her sister had left with her before she left for her final, fateful battle alongside Orakio.

"We have them," Sean said flatly. "Orakio's Sword, Miun's Claw, Lune's Slicer, Siren's Shot, and Laya's Bow—all five of the ancient weapons. We also have the word of power from the Sages: Nei."

The first of the Councillors burst into a gleeful smile that made the laugh lines stand out on his face.

"_Nei!_ Of _course_ that would be the word of power!"

"What's so funny?" Kara snapped. Laya had to agree that laughter was not the response she had expected.

"It is a play on words," explained the dark-eyed Second Councillor. "Nei is not just the word _of_ power, it literally _is_ the word 'power' in the language spoken by the weapons' creator."

"I do not have information concerning such a language in my data files," stated Wren.

"Nor would you," said the First Councillor. "The tongue died out a millennium or more before your creation, enduring only among wizards and Espers."

"Espers?" Sean asked.

The Third Councillor, his eyes as green as the Dragon Tear, nodded gravely.

"It is the ancient term for your people, Prince of Azura, those now called 'Layans' in honor of their leader in the Devastation War. As Wren was created by their Orakian enemies, he would not possess this knowledge."

"We don't have time for a history lesson!" Kara exploded. "We ran your damn errands, and it's just made things worse. We found the sword in a sunken palace in Landen, stuck into a sigil in the floor, and when Sean pulled it out he set loose some kind of...of _demon_ called Dark Force."

The Fourth Councillor gazed at her with smoke-gray eyes that were further clouded by the rheum of age.

"We felt it, child. Our whole world shook with its release." For just an instant the veil seemed to lift from his gaze, the memory of a deep horror enough to give him clarity.

Laya understood. In that one terrible moment when the demon's form had loomed over her, she had felt herself all but smothered in pure malice, pain and suffering and fathomless rage somehow given flesh. How or why they had been spared in that instant, she had no idea.

"Do not fear," said the dark-eyed Councillor. "All is as it was intended to be."

Sean stared at him in disbelief.

"Are you telling me that you _knew_ this would happen, that we were going to turn that _thing_ loose on the _Alisa III_?" His hands tightened on the hilt of the black sword, and for one dreadful moment Laya thought he was going to launch himself at the old men.

"Please, young prince, let us explain!" urged the First Councillor, holding up his hands in a gesture of supplication. "We had no malign intent!"

"No malign intent? That monstrosity _was_ 'malign intent'!" Kara raged.

"My sister's last message said that she and Orakio were going forth to face an 'evil force from times beyond legend' that had been the true cause of the war," Laya added, more calmly. "Dark Force was certainly that evil, defeated by them and sealed, until now."

"Yes, indeed, but not sealed _fully_! Surely you realize that even before you broke the seal there was destruction and horror loose on the _Alisa III_. It was why you came to us in the first place."

"That is accurate," Wren observed. "The destruction of Azura was carried out by a party not Lune or Siren, and occurred prior to Dark Force's unsealing."

Laya saw the slight twitch of the muscle in Sean's jaw at Wren's matter-of-fact, even casual mention of the destruction of Sean's home, his parents, his people, but the point was made. The Prince of Azura lowered his blade.

"We're listening," he said.

"This is going to have to be one hell of an explanation," Kara snapped.

The First Councillor smiled faintly at that, his blue eyes twinkling.

"Quite."

He turned to the Third Councillor.

"Perhaps it would be best to begin by explaining what we know of the legendary weapons."

"I believe you are correct."

A chill wind swept through the floating city, making Sean's cape swirl around him and tugging at his long, green ponytail. Laya shivered again, as if the wind were blowing against her soul, not just her body.

"In the present age, the legendary weapons are called for the champions that wielded them in the Devastation War, but they are actually far older than that, a treasure of the planet Palm—you know of Palm?"

"Yes, we heard of our origins in New Mota, the story of the exodus and how Dark Force has plagued our people for centuries," Sean answered.

"Good. The Nei weapons were a set crafted by Esper wizards in those long-gone days for the purpose of fighting Dark Force. Indeed, our lore suggests that originally there were two sets, one kept on Palm and one on another planet. When our people escaped Palm, they saved this set of legendary weapons. Unfortunately, when the Devastation War broke out, the weapons were seized by the champions of each side and used in battle."

The Second Councillor took up the thread of the story.

"The five weapons are the key to a spell, or as you would call it, a technique, designed to seal away Dark Force. However, when Orakio and Laya fought Dark Force a millennium ago, they had only two of the five weapons, Orakio's Sword and Miun's Claw. Lune's Slicer and Siren's Shot were imprisoned on Dahlia and Azura respectively with their wielders, while Laya's Bow..."

"She entrusted it to me," Laya said softly.

The Fifth Councillor, heretofore silent, raised his head, revealing sightless white eyes.

"Orakio and Laya used only two of the five, resulting in an imperfect seal. While the demon's physical body was bound and its will forced into slumber, its power was not stilled. Those corrupted by its evil remained so and could continue to tap their master's darkness. You have seen some of these minions, as well as the monsters and robots that they have created." His voice was as cold as the wind, a frozen chill of portent.

"Then Dark Force's followers, they've manipulated everything? Is that what you're saying?" Sean challenged.

"Who can say?" observed the First Councillor. "Evil is insidious, and we can only see so much from our lofty perch. Yet, a thousand years after Orakio and Laya sent them away, Azura and Dahlia were called back to the _Alisa III_. Lune and Siren were freed to wage war on the people, and the passages between the worlds were opened, so that by the time the two ancient generals learned the error of their ways, the spawn of darkness was free to spread evil again. We may never know how much of this was planned and how much due to a capricious fate."

"What we do know," added the Third Councillor, "is that for the first time the five legendary weapons have been gathered in the hands of champions ready and willing to use them for their intended purpose."

_Champions?_ Laya thought. They didn't feel like champions to her. Relics of the past, royalty of the present, they might have seemed that way on the outside. But heroes? Sean and Kara wanted nothing more than revenge. They weren't interested in heroics; their personal motivations were enough. The androids were following an assigned mission. Laya herself was doing it for the sake of a memory, her older sister's wish.

Still, with their ties to the past, they were in a way the standard bearers of that ancient age when Dark Force had been fought and, albeit temporarily, beaten. And at the least, none would shirk from the task before them.

"With the five weapons together," said the Fifth Councillor, "it is our hope that Dark Force can be sealed once and for all, not just its body but its corrupting will and unholy magic."

"Your _hope_?" Kara pounced on the word. "What the hell do you mean, your _hope_?"

The First Councillor looked at her with sad eyes.

"No one truly knows if your weapons will be enough. The legends...they do not say if the quintet was ever used on Palm. Or if Dark Force has grown stronger or weaker through the centuries of imprisonment."

"Or," the Fourth Councillor said, trembling slightly, "you may not be strong enough to defeat the demon!"

"No," Sean said flatly. "We're not going to lose. Whether it's a past to avenge or a dream to protect, we've all got too much to fight for." He glanced at the others, seeing nothing but agreement in their faces. "Tell us what we need to do."

The Second Councillor nodded.

"Once we have invoked the true power of the Nei weapons, you must seek out Dark Force and defeat the demon in combat. With its physical body temporarily disrupted, any of the Espers—Layans—among you can enact the chant of sealing. We will teach it to you before you depart Skyhaven."

"As you have obtained the word of power," added the emerald-eyed Councillor, "we can perform the ritual to invoke the true strength of the ancient weapons. Sean Sa Riik, are you and your companions ready to accept this power and this burden?"

"Of course," he said without hesitation. Laya wondered if he was answering for himself or for all of them. Whatever his intent, it turned out to be the former when Kara couldn't resist speaking up herself.

"Oh, yes," she agreed with a savage grin.

"I will carry out my directive," Wren observed.

"For a tomorrow free of the burdens of the past," Mieu said quietly.

"And for the dreams entrusted to us," Laya finished.

"Then let it be done."

The five old men strode forward, forming a semicircle facing the companions. They drew themselves up, and in that moment were no longer weak and frail, relics of a forgotten past barely clinging to the present, but shining with power in Laya's sight. It was the might of Skyhaven, which they had saved for this moment.

Their voices rose in harmony, and with the chant came an energy, a presence that seemed to gather in their air around them. The city was alive with it; the power burned along Laya's nerves, throbbed in the racing of her blood, made the ruby inset in the skin of her forehead pulse with cold fire.

She didn't know the words of the chant, though they beckoned to her with a haunting familiarity. One, though, came again and again, standing out from the rest: _Nei...Nei...Nei..._ With each repetition, the force in the air grew stronger, more intense, and the bow's grip seemed to be alive with tingling heat in her hand.

Then, the chant reached a thunderous crescendo, and the power seemed to flow from the air and into her. She gasped in pain, hearing the others cry out as well, only Wren remaining silent, as always accepting his burden without complaint.

The power rushed through Laya and into her sister's bow. For a split second the laconia fittings and inlays of the legendary weapon burned with an aura of silver-blue radiance, and then it faded, leaving glittering motes of silver among the black. She glanced at the others and saw that their weapons, too, had been changed in the same way; dull black metal now looked like slices of the night sky.

In the depths of her soul, echoing from far away, Laya could feel a scream of rage, hatred thickly laced with fear. Knowing that Dark Force had felt the Council's working, knew that its death was calling, made hope swell within her.

It was time to end this, now and forever, and lift the shadow of the past.

~X X X~

_A/N: I always considered "Dawnbringers" to be the weakest of my Phantasy Star III stories, so I've completely rewritten it for this new collection. Among other things, I've expanded and yet restricted the theory of the Nei weapons and how they worked. What the reader will easily see is that the Nei weapons of Phantasy Star III are not the same as the Nei weapons of Phantasy Star II (and really, how could they be?). The second set referred to by the Council, the one kept by the Espers of Dezo, those would be the PSII Nei weapons, while the set that became the PSIII Legendary Weapons were the ones kept by the Espers (Layans) of Palm._

_As for "Nei" meaning, literally, "power" (or more accurately, "magical power")--what, you didn't really think that the weapons locked away in those dungeons on Dezo in PSII were actually _named after _the player character Nei, who was all of two years old? On the contrary, here's a situation where PSIII actually adds clarification. Isn't it much more likely that the Biosystems Lab scientists on Mota who created Neifirst and Nei, experimenting in creating genetically-enhanced humanity, would instead name their project something like "Nei"--i.e., the _character_ was named after the _word_, not the other way around._

_The Fourth Councillor's depiction here, by the way, draws on the fact that he's the one who has the typo in his "go look for Sage Isle" speech which says it's in Elysium instead of Aquatica. The game manual actually highlights this and handwaves it by saying that he's gone a bit senile. I decided to work with that in describing him._


	6. Heart of Stone

Victory was a heady feeling. To see one's foes defeated, utterly crushed at one's feet, was enough to fill most people with the pride, the glorious exultation of a triumphant deity. Sean, the green-haired Prince of Azura, had won such a victory, one for the ages. He and his friends had in one stroke taken vengeance on the destroyers of his home and family, put an end to the machinations that had shaped the events of three generations in the seven worlds of the colony ship _Alisa III_, sealed the master of evil, the Dark Force itself, away with the five Nei weapons so that it could only whimper and whine to itself, unable to send out even the smallest fragment of its will to any who might hear. The floating city of Lashute that had been the home of this evil lay at the bottom of Terminus's central lake, torn to pieces by Sean's own power, the power of Megido, destruction incarnate.

It was as utter and complete a victory as there had ever been.

But yet, there was another side to the triumph, one that left Sean feeling all at sea, feeling almost as if he was detached from reality.

"Witness the Man of Stone, eternally frozen in place as he looks into the night."

Sean turned in surprise. It was Kara, of course. The android Wren did not have a sense of humor, and while his female counterpart Mieu did, hers did not extend to brazen mockery of the one who was technically her master. The last member of their group, Laya, was usually gentle, sometimes enigmatic, and occasionally fierce when overwrought by emotion, but she, too simply didn't have it in her.

On the other hand, Kara, Princess of Dahlia, most certainly did. Kara was fiery and confrontational; her anger at her enemies blazed openly, unlike Sean's, which he'd kept locked in his heart.

The princess had unbound her long, pastel-green hair from its bandanna so it flowed free around her shoulders; she was likewise without her war-robe of laconia mesh, leaving her lithe, catlike form clad only in her snug red leather dress. She was, for the first time since Sean had known her, positively beaming.

"That's how Mieu thinks of you, you know. I heard her say it to Wren, once."

They were alone by the campfire, Sean realized. Mieu had gone off down by the lakeshore, and Wren, needing neither food nor sleep nor companionship, was standing sentry duty. Laya was off somewhere, out of sight.

Kara waved a hand in front of Sean's face.

"Hey, are you _in_ there?"

He blinked.

"Yes; sorry."

"Okay, that's it," she said, her smile vanishing into a worried frown. "What's going on here? We won, you know, or did you forget that?"

Sean sighed.

"I...it's hard to explain."

Kara grabbed his arm and pulled him down to the soft grass, then started rummaging through her pack.

"Aha! Here we go."

She pulled out a tall bottle of shock-resistant plastiglass, filled to near the top with a brilliant violet liquid in which tiny specks of amber seemed to throw back the flames like stars at twilight.

"This is a bottle of six-hundred-year-old Dahlian brandy, in which I hoped I could drink a toast over the graves of whichever bastards got us in this mess in the first place. Since we did a very effective job of putting them into those graves, I'd say that now is the time. Besides which, my experience has been that whenever things are hard to explain, you need the ear of a friend and a fair amount of liquor to get through them."

Sean couldn't help it; he chuckled.

"Kara, you're something else."

"I'll take that as a compliment, since I'd hate to have to break your jaw before we even get started."

It was comments like those--not completely spoken in jest--which reminded Sean of just how close to the edge Kara really skated. He had learned a harsh lesson when Azura was destroyed, but Kara had been taught nothing but hatred and war from childhood, and the fury that drove her ran much more deeply in her than it ever had in him.

She broke the seal on the bottle and removed the cap. A flick of her wrist tossed the first swig onto the flames where it sizzled and sparked, then she finished the ancient Layan toast.

"Never dream, what can be lived!"

Kara lifted the bottle to her lips and drank deeply, even the battle-hardened girl shuddering as the potent liquor burned down her throat. She handed the brandy to Sean, but he did not follow suit at once.

"Sean," she said in exasperation, "have you ever read a fairy tale in which the beautiful princess has to drink alone?"

"I can't say that I have."

"Well, then?"

Submitting to the uniquely Karan logic, Sean took a deep draft to match hers. The alcohol seemed to catch fire in him, the clouds of smoke rising to make his thoughts swim suddenly. As he sat there, contemplating the sensations, he realized that it would be good to have someone to speak to--that in fact he had, not once, even made the attempt to open himself up to anyone since the whole thing had begun.

"I never thought it would feel this way."

"Oh?"

He took another drink, then passed the bottle back to her.

"Winning, I mean."

She evened the swigs.

"Well, Sean, I didn't think you meant the brandy."

He grinned at her. Kara seemed to be single-handedly forcing more good humor out of the young prince than he'd felt in the past several months put together.

"Maybe I should have; it applies to that, too. What's that aftertaste to it?"

"Dragonorb."

"I thought that was a poison."

Kara giggled.

"So's _alcohol_, if you drink enough of it."

"Kara, you can't be getting drunk _already_."

She blinked.

"I can't? Well, I'll just have to fix that." She downed another healthy dose of the violet liquor, then passed the bottle again. The fire danced happily, sending shadows trailing across her face. Sean stared into it, the leaping flames taking him back almost hypnotically into the past.

"When Azura was destroyed, I lost everything," he said quietly. "I lost my parents, I lost my friends, I lost my home, I lost my people. I was raised to be a prince. That meant that it was my duty to lead my people, but also to serve them, to protect them." He turned to look at Kara. "You should understand that; you're a princess."

"Oh, sure. If you count butchering as many of Dahlia's enemies as I could in the shortest possible time serving its people."

Sean's stomach lurched.

"You say it so casually."

Kara reached out and grabbed Sean's shoulder.

"I was born into war, Sean. My father was a psychotic madman who wanted to spill Orakian blood until the seas ran red. Then he finally had his eyes opened and he became a broken thing because everything he had was lost. My mother was an irrelevancy whose name I don't even know." She blinked, and the brittle intensity went out of her voice. "But yes, I do see what you mean."

The Prince of Azura sighed.

"Well, I can see how your father feels. I had a happy home and--poof!--it went away. I'd been raised, studied all my life how to be a good ruler and--poof!--no people to rule. Eighteen years that might as well never have happened, that was my life." He waved a hand airily, as if the sparks that danced up from the fire and vanished were Azura, his parents, his people.

The bottle passed back and forth again.

"Yeah, but _you_ didn't just sit around _useless_ all day."

"That was because I had something to replace my life with. I had vengeance. So, vengeance became my reason for being--find the ones responsible and destroy them."

"But you were so calm about it. No fear, no anger, no sorrow. All you needed was some heavier armor and a shot and you might as well have been Wren."

"Why not? I didn't have anything else to live for. Anything else would just get in the way, right?"

"You're asking _me_?" Kara laughed. "What would I know about controlling my emotions?"

"Good point."

"Oh, shut up."

"I thought you wanted me to talk."

Kara sniffed and folded her arms over her chest.

"I changed my mind."

Sean waggled a finger at her.

"No, no, no, you started this, so you've got to hear the end of it."

"Who says?"

Some part of Sean's brain realized that both the young royals were by this time quite drunk thanks to the potent brandy, but it was a very small part which did not speak very loudly.

"_I_ say."

"Oh, okay; that's different."

"So, if you're asking me why I...why I was so distracted, cut off from the world..."

Kara nodded. Intoxicated she might be, but she clearly remembered what had brought her to this point in the first place.

"Well," Sean began, trying to explain. It was slow going for the young man to convert feelings into words, slower still to choose the right words under the influence of the liquor. Ironically, though, the brandy did him a favor, bringing those feelings out into the open past the natural reserve his conscious mind usually kept locked around them. "Well, we _won_."

"Damn straight we won!"

"But now that we did win, what's left? I've achieved my vengeance."

"Justice," Kara corrected. "Their very scheming to open the doors between the worlds and bring back my father and that insane android Siren also ended up putting the means of their ultimate defeat into our hands. Hoist by their own petard. Whatever a petard is."

"You can call it whatever you like, but the point is that it's over. I've accomplished my quest; there's no more to be done, no more enemies to fight. What do I have left to live for? Nothing!" he spat bitterly. "I have no lands that need me, no evils to vanquish--nothing at all."

Kara's fist crashed against the side of his jaw, sending him sprawling onto his back.

"You idiot!" she shouted.

"Wha--?"

"No _wonder_ you say you can understand my father. You sound just _like_ him!"

Sean just blinked.

"When he found out his war against the Orakians was no more than the useless murder of innocents, he lost all his strength. Too weak to act because he'd lost the driving passion in his life, too burdened by his guilt to risk doing anything again. Too...damned..._blind_ to look around and see that he was _needed_."

There was nothing, Sean thought, that sobered one up quite so quickly as a friend's anger.

"Well, maybe he is needed," Sean said. "Maybe he has Dahlia to rule, a sister and a daughter to care for. But I'm not like him. I don't have any of that. I don't have a duty to anyone because I don't _have_ anyone."

In frustration, Kara yanked on her hair.

"You've got your _life_, twit! Mieu once told me how your parents ordered her and Wren to get you away safely, how the cyborgs basically had to drag you bodily into the shuttle. Doesn't that _tell_ you something? Your parents wanted you to have the chance to live! You aren't some weapon of vengeance they turned loose, you're their son."

He'd never looked at it that way before.

Then again, he'd never looked at it at all before.

"And as for not having anyone, what about us, huh? Aren't we all friends here? Okay, Wren is a stretch," she admitted, "but Mieu'll be there by your side for the rest of your lives. Laya's been asleep for a thousand years; she doesn't have any family left besides us either, y'know. And what about me?"

"What about--?"

Before he could get any further in his question, Kara made her meaning painfully clear. She fisted both hands in the front of Sean's tunic and hauled him up to a sitting position, then planted a kiss full on his lips. It was not what one might call a sisterly kiss. There was enough raw energy and passion in it to explain just how, in fairy tales, lovers' kisses could shatter enchantments and wake the dead.

It even held, perhaps, enough heat to melt a man of stone.


	7. Closing the Circle

That night, there were celebrations in the seven domed worlds of the _Alisa III_. The shadowy demons which had been the minions of Dark Force and its puppet Rulakir had faded from the world. Undead horrors had collapsed into dust when they were cut off from the power of their monstrous lord, sealed away--fully, this time--by the power of the five Nei weapons. Other, more physical foes like the corrupted folk of Lashute had been decimated by Sean's Megido technique, which had torn the whole city apart.

These events had echoed across the domes, for when the Lashutans had died, there was no one to command their monsters and cyborgs. The horrors bred in their laboratories and factories over the millennium since the Devastation War were stronger than any the world had seen, but they were still merely footsoldiers, possessed of no evil will of their own. Monsters reverted to their animal instincts without a controlling influence, while cyborgs fell inert, awaiting orders. Neither was the ravaging force threatening Orakians and Layans indiscriminately that they had been while under Lashutan control.

Even in Terminus, the dome which Lashute had scoured bare of all but its own diabolic creations, there was good cheer. Oddly enough, the happiest of the group of five which had wrought Dark Force's defeat was Mieu, the red-haired combat cyborg. While her fellow android, Wren, was generally more advanced in terms of skill and functions, Mieu had one thing he did not: a fully-developed personality program, complete with human emotions.

Wren's lack of a need for companionship had made him the perfect choice to guard their little camp in case of wandering monsters who might mistake heroes for supper. Sean and Kara were sitting by the fire, talking earnestly (and laughing more than talking; they were two-thirds of the way through a bottle of very old, very potent Dahlian brandy Kara had been saving "for a special occasion"), and Mieu hadn't wanted to butt in.

"Looking at them makes me feel very old," she decided.

"If it's any consolation, you don't look a day over five hundred."

Mieu turned. It was, of course, the fifth member of their party who had spoken. Laya's strange, dark eyes with their white pupils and the scarlet jewel in the center of her forehead set her apart from the other humans, but not more than her lineage: she was the younger sister of _the_ Laya, the leader of one side in the Devastation War, who had given her name to the Layan people. Like Mieu, the younger Laya was an ancient. Technically, she was actually _older_ than Mieu; Laya had been born on the planet Palm, whose doom the _Alisa III_ had escaped, only to fall into the clutches of that doom's architect, Dark Force. Yet Laya was barely twenty years old, biologically; she had spent centuries caught in cryogenic stasis.

"Well, coming from you that means something," Mieu riposted, then took all the sting from her words by bursting into a fit of the giggles. "I must admit, though, that makes me feel every one of my years." She nodded at Sean and Kara. "First Rhys and Maia, then Ayn and Thea, now...who knows?"

"It would be entertaining. Fire and stone, those two."

"Sean wasn't always so cold," Mieu defended her master. "Well, admittedly he was always serious and determined, but the loss of his parents and his people seemed to strip the happiness from him."

"Perhaps defeating Dark Force and closing the circle will be good for him--for them both."

She picked up a pebble and, with a flick of her wrist, sent it skipping across the lake's surface.

"I hope so."

"Do you think it will be good for us?"

Mieu tilted her head, a gesture her programming told her indicated curiosity among humans.

"Us? What do you mean, Laya?"

"Sean and Kara are young. They didn't have a mission; they just faced up to the challenges of the world they were born into. The rest of us are different, remnants of a bloody past cached by your creator and my sister in case of...what happened. Now, that is past us. Wren, of course, is programmed for service. Waiting, completion...they don't matter to him."

"But they do to us," Mieu realized where the girl was heading.

"What will we do now?"

Laya sat down on the shore. After a moment, Mieu joined her.

"Live, I guess. I never really thought about it. My duty has always been to serve and protect the descendants of Orakio. The completion of one quest within Sean's life doesn't change that duty."

"I see. Then Orakio never told you about Dark Force?"

Mieu shook her head.

"No, just like he never told me about his alliance with your sister." That oversight still rankled, though reasonably she knew that he probably had never had the chance.

"He must have cared for his family very much to have left you to protect them." A faint smile played around Laya's lips.

"Yes, Orakio always regretted the demands that war placed upon him, that they had to spend so much time apart."

"He reminds me of my sister. She always protected me, really more of a mother than a sister in truth. Laya was nearly twenty years older. I suppose that's my answer, really. She didn't have me wait as a weapon to fight Dark Force; she was trying to keep me safe from the war. That's why she hid me away, to make sure I'd get the chance to live. If she won, she could come back for me. If not, then...then there was her pendant and her message, so I could finish what she started."

"And Wren to finish for Orakio. It's strange, isn't it? The Lashutans boasted that Rhys and Ayn had danced to their tune, opening the sealed passageways, and yet even as they were unknowingly helping Dark Force they were also gathering the seeds of its defeat. Bringing the moons near freed Lune and Siren from their prisons, but it also brought two of the Nei weapons, Lune's Slicer and Siren's Shot, back to the _Alisa III_ for Kara and Wren to use."

Laya smiled her wry, secret smile again, a smile that hinted at nine hundred and eighty-seven years of frozen dreams.

"Strange? Maybe, but I don't think so."

"Why?"

"Well, Orakio and Laya committed a great wrong. They fell prey to Dark Force's deceptions, and their war not only devastated our ship but killed so many others on the fleet that was destroyed. To atone for a sin of that magnitude can't be done in a moment. It might even take centuries."

"Do you think--?"

The younger Laya winked playfully, and just for a moment Mieu thought she could see reflected in the girl's midnight eyes two faces, smiling happily at their family.


	8. Sand into Glass

_A/N: As the first "new" story in this sequence, I'm forced, of course, to post it out of order. It actually would come first in the sequence, chronologically._

~X X X~

"The truth of the matter is, Lune's forces haven't budged since Azura was destroyed. They've been up to something else entirely."

Queen Sari of Landen did not mince words. Others, the courtiers of Landen and even the android Mieu, had danced around the topic with Sean. After all, the green-haired prince was the last known human survivor of the Satellite. The transplanted kingdoms of Cille and Shusoran were gone, their people murdered, their legacy destroyed, and Sean Sa Riik was all that was left. They treaded lightly, for fear of hurting him further.

_Idiots_, Sean thought. He'd lost his parents. He'd lost his friends. He'd lost his home. He'd lost his people. He'd lost his very reason for being—eighteen years of training to be a prince ripped apart in an instant. And they wanted to avoid hurting his _feelings_?

No, give him Sari's directness any day.

From what his parents had told him, Sari had been blunt even in her youth, but there was good reason for her to be so now. Landen had been at war with the Layan forces of Lune for longer than Sean had been alive. Instead of a fancy silk dress like Sean's mother might have worn, Sari's formal garb was a divided skirt, slit up both sides to the waist for near-complete freedom of movement, worn over utilitarian leggings and boots, with a bodice worn under a silver-bright laconia chestplate. She openly wore knives on both hips, and Sean suspected that she had a couple more secreted somewhere about her person. And this was what she wore to greet a state visitor! The queen had long ago been swallowed up by the role of general. She didn't have _time_ to be diplomatic.

From what Sean had heard in the city, Sari did most of her commanding from the front lines, in the teeth of the enemy. They spoke of her like a warrior saint, as if she alone was winning the war for Landen. They said Lune Kai Eshyr, once the general who'd stood at the right hand of Laya herself, a demon out of legend to the Landen-folk, did not take the battlefield himself because he was scared to fight Sari one-on-one.

The stories might even be true. Certainly, he understood why his parents had encouraged him to seek Sari's aid before ordering Wren and Mieu to drag him on board the escape shuttle.

"The world's gone mad," she continued. "If you've come here from Aridia, you've seen it yourself. Packs of monsters like Lune's, and cyborgs like the ones of Siren's army, and even worse besides, all wandering freely and attacking Orakians and Layans indiscriminately."

Sean folded his arms across his chest. His gaze flicked around the room. It was Landen Castle's conference hall, he judged, given its long, polished table and the banners of the kingdom's noble houses and knightly orders hanging from the walls. There had once been a skylight, but it had been walled over so that the spot where it had been now looked like a scar running nearly the length of the ceiling. A scar of war.

"Are you listening to me?"

Sean's gaze snapped back to Sari.

"No, of course you're not," she said, a faint hint of contempt in her voice.

Rubbed raw to the point of bleeding as his emotions were, it was enough to set Sean off.

"You said you'd help me find Siren! This war with Lune is your problem, Landen's problem. I don't care if he's pulled back. I want to find _Siren_ and make him pay for Azura, not listen to a lecture on something that doesn't matter!"

The sharp crack of Sari's palm on his cheek echoed in the high-ceilinged room. Howling with rage, he swung at her, but she caught his wrist in her left hand and shoved him almost effortlessly down into one of the velvet-cushioned chairs at the table.

"Sit, if you know what's good for you."

"I'm not—" he tried, but her gaze alone kept him pinned. There was fury in her eyes, but it was tightly, ruthlessly leashed, and all the more fearsome because of it. He shifted uneasily in his chair.

"That was pathetic," she said flatly. "Do you think you can get your revenge like that?"

"I—"

"If you can't stay calm, then you're no good to anyone."

"Calm!" he exploded. "How can you expect me to be _calm_? You want me to just ignore what happened to Azura? To my people? To my _parents_? For Laya's sake, they were your _friends_, weren't they?"

"Do you think I don't care?"

Something, maybe a trickle of survival instinct from his hindbrain, made him change his response before he said it aloud.

"No, I don't think that."

"Good answer. But I know something else, which is that fear and temper won't get you anything."

She grabbed one of the chairs, pulled it out, and sat down.

"Look, I understand what you're going through, I really do. When Lune's armies first attacked, I lost everything. My homeland of Satera was destroyed, my family was killed, and those of us who survived fled to Landen where things were nearly as bad. Odds are, I'd have run off and gotten myself killed too if the people here hadn't grabbed me and shoved a crown on my head because I was the last person with more than three drops of royal blood in them, even if it was for the wrong kingdom."

Sean blinked in surprise.

"I...I didn't know—"

She shook her head.

"That's not the point. What happened to me doesn't change your problem. It just means that I see where you're coming from, that's all. I know what it's like to have fear and grief and temper all writhing around inside of you, until you do stupid things like insult the people trying to help you and take a weak, zero-skill punch at a friend. Which ought to be your best lesson."

"What lesson?" he said sullenly. "That you can kick my butt?"

She snorted.

"Half my chambermaids could kick your behind if you punch like that. Mieu tells me you're a good swordsman, probably better than your father, but you let all your training go and flailed at me like a schoolboy because you were too angry to think straight. Hell, just since I sat you down you've gone from rage to sympathy to bitterness. Your feelings are flying around all over the place. And it's going to get you killed."

"So I'm supposed to calm down? Put it all away for the good of my soul? Just give up my revenge like everyone on Azura didn't mean a damned thing?"

"Do I look like a priest? I don't think so."

"Then what?"

"Did you ever try to build anything out of sand?"

"What?"

"Did you ever try to build anything out of sand when you were a little kid? Like if you visited Draconia on vacation or something?"

"Y-yeah. One of the kids in Techna showed me how to build a sandcastle, once." He'd been about six, and his parents had gone there on a diplomatic trip, and he'd cried so much at the thought of being left alone that they'd taken him with them.

"How'd that work for you?"

"Not so good," he muttered. He'd never quite figured out how much water to mix in so it would cling together but not turn into a muddy mess.

"You can't make things out of sand," she added. "They don't hold their shape. They fall apart under the slightest pressure. At best they're pretty to look at for a little bit, but you can't _do_ anything with them." She paused for a beat before finishing with what Sean was expecting by then. "Your feelings are sand."

"How do you figure?"

She had no trouble answering his retort.

"They're scattered. They're confused. You've got some blind rage at the one who did this, some grief for your losses, some confusion about what your life consists of now that you've got nothing to be prince of, some fear that the world's turned on you, some fear of being alone, some misdirected anger at Ayn and Thea for making you live while they died, and for sending Wren and Mieu with you instead of going themselves. How am I doing so far?"

He didn't answer. She didn't need him to.

"Like I said, sand. That's what your heart is right now, a bunch of different particles of emotion pressed up together. And it won't work. For us humans, resolve, determination, the will needed to accomplish anything comes from our feelings, whether love or hate, compassion or greed, whatever. Strong actions come from strong emotions. Weak emotions...you put them to the test and they fall apart."

"So, what? You're telling me I can't do anything?"

"Like you are now, no."

"But I can't just throw my feelings away! I'm not Wren; I can't just shut down my emotions!"

"And like I said before, I'm not asking you to. You can't build anything useful out of sand, sure, but if you throw away the sand, what have you got left?"

"...Nothing."

He was sure it wasn't the right answer, expecting some kind of pithy philosophical musing. Sean really should have known better.

"Right. And building something out of nothing is a hell of a lot harder than even using sand."

"So what _do_ I do?"

Sari got up and walked over to the long sideboard set against one wall, where decanters of spirits were set for the refreshment of those using the hall. Sean thought she was getting herself a drink, but instead she just picked up a tumbler and walked back to the table. She set it down and slid it over to him.

"You see that?"

"It's a glass. So what?"

"Pick it up."

He did. "Hey, this feels different from the ones back home."

Sari nodded.

"Azura was an artificial world. Well, so's this, I guess, but the point is, your glasses aren't actually made of glass, but that clear stuff they use for floors. Here in Landen, we actually have glass. And do you know what they make glass from?"

"What?"

"Sand."

It was a mark of how messed up his emotions were, Sean thought, that he hadn't actually seen that coming.

"Glassblowers apply heat, they melt it down, then they craft it into a variety of shapes. But the point is, it's still the same stuff. Only now, you can actually do something useful with it."

"So you're saying, don't throw away my feelings, but..."

Sari nodded.

"Right. _Use _them. Get them under control, and let them drive you. Do you want revenge for your parents, for Azura? Then go find it. But do it under control. Find what you really want and focus on it. Understand?"

He nodded back, a short, sharp gesture.

"I do." He paused. "I think," he added honestly. "That is, I see what you're saying, but to do it..."

"That's always the hard part, isn't it? Look, go take a break, have some dinner, and think for a while. Then after you've had a chance to sleep on it, we'll talk tomorrow. I've got a lot of information for you, and it's not all pointing in the same direction. If Siren did destroy Azura, he may not be working alone."

"_What?_"

"I tried to tell you before, but you weren't listening. Tomorrow, we'll see if you're ready to hear."

He started to protest, to demand more information...but then shut his mouth. This was exactly the kind of thing she was talking about. He needed a head, a heart, as clear and firm as glass if he was going to be able to absorb this information and come up with a plan.

Sean rose from his seat.

"All right, Queen Sari. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Good. And forget the 'Queen'; you're as good as family."

"Thank you, Sari."

He left the conference room, leaving the Queen of Landen alone. She picked up the tumbler, strolled back to the sideboard, and picked up a decanter. Sari considered pouring a glass of the amber-hued liquor, then shrugged it off and set the bottle back down. The unused tumbler, too, went back into its place. Idly, she ran her fingertip around its base.

Her metaphor, she thought, was true another way. Glass was solid, yes, would hold a shape and be useful, but it was also brittle. It would shatter under a solid blow. And Sean Sa Riik of Azura...turning his sand to glass might get him moving again, give him some resolve, but unless he found something else along the way, she was afraid _he_ would break. Revenge alone never made good building materials for a heart, and if Sean didn't add something else to his—the way _she_ had found something more than revenge in the trust the people of Landen had put in her—she doubted he'd survive the crisis that seemed to be engulfing them all at ever-increasing speed.

You couldn't _tell_ a person that, though. Sari knew as well as anyone that if someone had the problem, they weren't ready to hear the answer. She'd just have to wait and hope.

Changing her mind, Sari picked up the glass and decanter again and poured herself a drink. Raising the glass to the empty room, she said, "Here's to your memory, Ayn and Thea. I hope you're looking over your boy from wherever you are, because I've got a feeling the rest of us are going to be counting on him for an awful lot."

She knocked back the liquor in one gulp, feeling it burn her throat on the way down, and in the silence of the empty chamber the Queen of Landen allowed herself a tear for her fallen friends.


End file.
